A change in the hierarchy?

Well, I have to say that I am unsure what to think about the new Nascar season at this point. It is not that I believe that some drivers have lost it, or that some new guy has shown up to be a hot rookie that dominates, it is what happened at Daytona yesterday that has me guessing.

Specifically, I am referring to the Dodge cars. Look, the fact that Jeff Gordan and Jimmy Johnson did not do well is not a gigantic surprise. I mean, c'mon, after the last couple of seasons, they had to have some bad luck sometime. No, what I found to be interesting is that six of the top eight cars were Dodges. The other two, Toyota. The Toyotas were not that big of a surprise to me though since they were with the Joe Gibbs team. JGR has good teams, good drivers and good engines, which is what you need to make it in Nascar.

Dodges though, have not really had that for awhile. Oh, I know, some will point at Kurt Busch and say he is a former champion and others will point at Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman and say that they have been major players for quite awhile now. Hell, some will even point at the retired Rusty Wallace. To all of them I say, well, I don't say much of anything. Busch won his championship in a Ford, Wallace never won a championship, Newman hadn't won a race in two years and Kahne was just flat out awful last year. In fact, most Dodges looked bad last year in "Car of Tomorrow" races. Well, the "Car of Tomorrow" is now the car of today and the Dodges (multiple teams by the way) looked strong.

That multiple team thing is what really caught my eye. This was not a situation where Jack Roush got all four of his Fords in the top ten and the next best Ford was in thirtieth place. No, there were at least three different Dodge teams in the top ten yesterday. Now, does this mean that Dodges will have a great year, that Dodges have figured out restrictor plate racing at the big tracks (finally) or that this year's Daytona was a fluke? Me, I am going with this being a good year for Dodge and I will tell you why.

Sometimes you will see a team figure out the proper setup for their cars at a type of track (superspeedway, intermediate, small or roadcourse). When a team figures that out, usually you see a gradual improvement by that team over a season and then great finishes for a couple of years until technology makes their setup obsolete. When this happens, teams do not share that information with other teams. They know that the information is short term and may be their only opportunity to catch a few wins on everyone. Yesterday's race did not fit this scenario. Yesterday we saw a strong performance by the cars of one manufacturer spread out over multiple teams. This means one thing, the cars are better. When the cars are better, their has been a higher level of committment by the manufacturer to improve aerodynamics and engine power across the board.

I am not saying that I believe that Chevy is in for a bad year, nor am I saying that Ford is either (although I do think Ford is in for a long season for other reasons). I simply believe that we will see more top tens this year for Dodge than we have in the past two years combined (big statement and we will see if they can back me up on this). Will that mean a championship for Dodge? I don't know if I will go that far as I think that both Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch in the new Toyotas are going to have a lot to say about that. However, much as I dislike him, I have to acknowledge that Kurt Busch is a heck of a driver when he has strong equipment, and this year he may finally have it.